


gentle like fire, subtle like gold

by bean_me_up



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Crystals, F/M, Mentions of Caulfield, Romance, and crashcon, and the shed incident, liberties taken with the art of fortune telling, palmistry, soft and just a little angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:15:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29249382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bean_me_up/pseuds/bean_me_up
Summary: A person's hands say a lot about them.  Where they're from, where they're at, where they're going.
Relationships: Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15
Collections: Maria DeLuca Healing Crystals Celebration





	gentle like fire, subtle like gold

**Author's Note:**

> For the Maria Healing Crystals Write-Along.  
> This is honestly more about palmistry than healing crystals, but there is still some rock content, I promise.

Maria’s apartment is filled with little decorative items, candles and paper weights and pillows and soft blankets. And somehow, in the middle of all that, she manages to remember the _exact_ seven candles that Michael’s added to her collection as she moves around the space with a lighter in hand.

She drops the lighter onto the coffee table and sits on the floor beside Michael who has a soft cloth in one hand, gently wiping dust off a collection of crystal pendants.

“So,” he says, picking up another colorful little rock and starting to polish it, “what’s the newest hustle?”

“A seminar. _Intention and Destiny: How to actualize your goals.”_

“And with Mrs. Evans bringing all her bridge club friends, at fifty bucks a head. . . “

“Sixty, actually,” Maria says with a grin.

“ _Nice.”_

“The crystal’s an extra twenty.”

He holds up a pendant to the warm candlelight. “So what are these supposed to be for again?”

“Crystals all have different purposes. These pendants are goldstone, they’re meant to help the wearer find confidence and empowerment. I use other crystals in palm reading, to focus energy, whatever I need them for.”

Michael tilts his head as he finishes with one pendant and reaches for another to clean. “I’ve never see you break out the rocks for a palm reading.”

“They have their uses,” she shrugs. “Want a reading?” Maria asks, looking at him sideways as she organizes her tarot cards.

Michael chuckles. “Don’t have sixty bucks just lyin’ around, you know.”

Maria’s answering grin is a little wicked. “I’m sure we can work out a different payment system later.” She turns to face him fully and holds out her hands, palm up. “Hands please.”

He places his upturned hands in hers. “I thought you just read one palm.”

She shakes her head. “A full reading is both hands. Where you started from, where you’re at, and where you might be heading.” She glances down at the bandana still wrapped around his left hand. “I can read plenty from your fingers, you know.”

Michael hesitates just slightly, then glances up Maria and slips off the bandana. “Full reading, right? Where I came from, where I’m at, where I’m going.”

She smiles softly at him and raises his left hand to her lips to place a gentle kiss to the tip of his ring finger. “So, since your left hand is your passive hand, it shows where you’ve been. Your influences, your heritage, your potential. And your right hand is your active hand, the one that shows the path you’re on.” She gently places his right hand, still upturned on her knee, and takes his left hand in both of hers.

Michael is silent while she studies the lines, tracing a featherlight finger along the grooves.

“You think the lines in my palm changed after everything?”

Maria stops and looks up at him. “Maybe. The lines of our hands change over time.” She tilts her head with a wry smile. “Dunno how alien healing affects things though.”

He looks down at his left hand, the straightened fingers, the smooth skin. “The calluses on this hand are in the wrong place, now.”

“Max’s healing didn’t get rid of those?”

“I think we’re confusing Max with a pumice stone, but no, he just. . . fixed what was broken.”

“I’m surprised you even know what a pumice stone is.”

Michael glances at her sideways and shrugs. “ _Isobel_.”

She hums and brushes her thumb up and down his hand. “So how’d your calluses move, then?”

“They didn’t.” He curls his fingers in, then fans them out. “Calluses just form where thing rub against your skin, pens and wrenches or whatever. And the way I use this hand changed, since now I have more fingers to put to work. But the old calluses haven’t really gone away yet, and the new ones are still forming.”

“New habits, new places for your skin to protect.”

“Blisters in the new spots in the mean time.”

“And new places that’ll get to be soft in their own time.”

Michael lets out a breath, lifts his hands a little, Maria’s following. “So what do these hands tell you?” 

  
  


“You’ve got fire hands.” Maria says, smoothing his fingers straight with a gentle sweep of her palm. “It fits.”

Michael looks down at the callused surface of his palms, the deep sweeping lines that Maria’s reading a story out of. Fire’s been a repeated motif in the horror-film reel of all the worst moments of his life, and he hates the fact that those are the parts of him that get etched into the shape of his hands. The fiery crash that stuck him on this damn planet, the flames that slowly overtook Rosa’s car that night, the smouldering wreckage after Caulfield exploded into a cloud of rubble and ash, the smoking remains of the spaceship at CrashCon, destroyed to save it from the flames all around it. It’s _awful,_ and not even the half of it. Because for every inferno that punctuates his life, there’s the little flames that eat up the space in-between. All those fires he started on cold nights, burning trash or stolen scrap wood, or whatever he could get his hands on, all to keep the chill away, keep the feeling in his fingers and toes because he didn’t have a _home_ to do that for him. The _sizzle_ of the priest’s cross as he heated it over bright coals as the grand finale to a long, _awful_ exorcism that didn’t work anyway. The spark of the welder’s torch in his dark bunker, night after night, trying to crack the mystery of the spaceship that stranded him here.

“Hey.” Maria’s voice is soft. “You ok?”

He clears his throat, shoves the memories down, puts a lid over them like he’s dealing with a grease fire in the kitchen. “Just thinking about the. . . _fire hands.”_

“You know what that means?”

Michael shakes his head, looks down at his palms instead.

“It means you’re charming, intelligent. Good at solving problems, bad at sitting still. The sort of person people can turn to, someone selfless.” She brushes a thumb across his hand. “A good partner.”

Maria must be reading the doubt in his hands, or on face, or maybe in his aura, because she continues. “Fire’s not always destructive, you know. Fire usually represents something _inspiring,_ passionate and moving and exciting. Fire brings life. And warmth. Like the sun, or the core of the earth.”

She leans down to kiss his open palm, and all he can do is try to absorb what she’s telling him. “So,” he clears his throat, tries to make his voice clearer. “What else can you see on here?”

Maria leans out of his space for a second to pull a painted metal tin closer to her. She pops open the lid and holds the round container out to him, giving it a little shake that makes the small colorful stones inside sing against the metal tin. “I always start with the life line. First, pick a rock.”

“Which one?”

“Any one. Whatever calls out to you. It’ll help guide my reading.”

“Is it supposed to just. . . _float_ out to me, or something.”

“If _you_ make a mess because of your alien superpowers, you’re cleaning it up.”

He smiles sideways at her then huffs out a breath and studies Maria’s little collection of stones. “Ummmm, this one?” He floats up a dark greenish rock and lands it gently in Maria’s open palm.

She holds it up to the light between two fingers. “Epidote.” She pronounces with a soft smile. “I like this one for you.”

“Green brings out my eyes, I guess.”

Maria tips her head to concede the point. “Epidote points to trust, strengthening relationships, and opening your heart. Acknowledging pain in your past to move forward to something brighter.”

“The rock is saying a lot.” Michael wiggles his fingers. “But it sounds pretty good.”

Maria studies his life line carefully. “You’ve got a pretty strong life line. Lots of crosses and grills earlier along the line, but it gets deeper and smoother as it goes on.” She looks up at him with a pleased smile. “I think you’re going to have a long life.”

“And it’s smooth sailing from here on out?” he asks doubtfully.

“Like I said, palmistry is about past, present, and future.”

“Where I’ve been, where I am, where I’m going.”

“And the life line is about health and family, mostly.” Maria explains, tracing her finger along the curved line near his thumb, first his left hand, then his right. “The crosses and grills look like they’re in your past. Like you’ve faced hardship, but the waves are smoothing out. And the epidote points to that, too. That you’re in a place of being able to _build_ those relationships, that family and that life for yourself. Just gotta keep your heart open and the good things will find you.”

Michael thinks that at least one of the _good things_ he’s supposed to find is sitting right in front of him, and he leans forward a little to kiss her, because he can, because he wants her to know that if she wants, there’s a spot for her in the bright and happy future she’s predicting, because if he’s opening up his heart right now, it will be for her. She smiles into the kiss, then hums a little and pulls back. “You know, I don’t do this with _all_ my palm-reading clients.”

“Make an exception?”

She rolls her eyes, tangles her fingers in his curls, pulls him close and kisses the breath out of him. Then holds the rock box up to his face before his brain even has a chance to catch up.

“Pick a rock. We’re doing the head line next.”

“We already know how good I am at--”

Maria shakes the box loudly in his face. “ _Pick_ a _rock.”_

He picks out a white crystal this time. “How’s this?”

“Clear quartz.”

“And?”

“This one points to clarity. Your head line is related to your intellect and decision making, so it looks like clarity is in your future.”

“Clarity? What does that mean?”

“Honestly, your head line is strong throughout. Your intellect has always been an important part of you. And it will continue to be. But you might see something more clearly soon about how to use it. Where to put that genius alien brain of yours to use.”

Michael sighs. “Any chance the rock can help me get any new information out of my bits of spaceship?”

“I bought this at a flea market for two dollars, Michael, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“Maybe it’s time to put the research away. With the console destroyed at CrashCon, it’s not like I can go anywhere.”

“If that’s what you want. But it’s like your hands. Where you came from, where you’re at, where you’re going. And if poking around those pieces of alien glass helps you figure out where you came from, that’s a good thing. But it doesn’t also have to tell you where you’re going.” Maria reaches over to cup his cheek gently. “That part’s up to you.”

“So. . . clarity.”

“Clarity. If not now, then soon.”

“Time to pick another rock?”

“Last one.”

He picks through the collection and selects a little pink stone. “What’s this one say about me?”

“Pink Opal. That’s emotional healing, love, and hope.”

“And the hands?”

“You’ve got a deep heart line. Some crosses on it, which can indicate shock or hardship, but there’s also a trident on it, which increases the power of the line.”

“So my heart is strong and powerful? Am I allowed to tell Max about this or is that insensitive?”

Maria laughs, shaking her head. “I’m never going to tell you _no_ when it comes to messing with Max, but your heart line started out strong, had some crosses and lines through it early on, then mostly smooths out later. But it’s always been strong. Means there’s always been someone who loves you, and that you’ve been capable of great love. Whether or not you knew it isn’t a given, though.”

“Where I came from.”

Maria nods, scoots closer so their knees are touching. “And here’s where you’re at.” She kisses him, sneaks one hand into his hair, holds him close as he melts into her warmth. “And where you’re at is a place of so much love, Michael. You’ve got people who _care._ The way _you_ care.”

Michael can barely breathe, but he manages the softest whisper. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“So where am I going?”

“Wherever you want. As long as we’re back in time to open the bar.”

**Author's Note:**

> [say hello on tumblr <3](https://bean-me-up.tumblr.com/)


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